


on the aether

by littleleotas



Category: Black Sails
Genre: (all this to say: i do not know what this is), (but is it), (yes), Crack, F/F, F/M, M/M, Mass Effect AU, Multi, Space Pirates, but is it really, tags will be updated as we go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-24 09:45:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13808622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleleotas/pseuds/littleleotas
Summary: Let me tell you a story about a salarian named Vasquez.Just kidding, he's not in this one. But this one does have space pirates!





	1. the punchline is revolution

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SAMH0UND](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SAMH0UND/gifts).



> samh0und wanted a Black Sails Mass Effect AU, and a Black Sails Mass Effect AU he shall have.
> 
> I only vaguely know where this is going but it also only exists so Sam can draw things, so...here we are.

A krogan, an asari, and a salarian walk into a bar. Technically, just the krogan and the salarian. The asari is already in the bar. But no one’s interested in a story that begins, “A krogan and a salarian walk into a bar.” It doesn’t grab you. Truth has no place in storytelling; it’s about weaving the truth and the lies together to make something interesting. Life isn’t interesting. Stories are.

So, a krogan, an asari, and a salarian walk into a bar. The asari gestures to the bartender, who pours three drinks. The usual drinks. He doesn’t need to be reminded what they are. Their table in the corner is empty, waiting for them in the darkest corner, the neon red lights just barely tinging the black of the shadows. They take their drinks, and their seats.

“The Blood Pack will be transporting a shipment of element zero through Tarith aboard the Khar’lak,” the asari says, her fingers elegantly tapping at her glass. “From there it could go to any number of bases, so I need you to hit it before it leaves Tarith.”

“How long?” asks the salarian.

“Two days.”

“Two days!” the salarian exclaims. He clears his throat, nervously realising how loud his voice was, looking around over his shoulder to ensure no one is eavesdropping. He lowers his voice. “Max, that’s absurd. We’d have to leave right now. We don’t have a crew, we don’t have a ship-“

“We don’t need a crew,” the krogan rasps. “We’ve got me.”

“Yes, well, as charming and useful as your insatiable bloodlust is, Anne, you and I cannot fly a ship on our own. A ship, you may have noticed, we don’t have in the first place.”

Max tilts her head down, looking up at the salarian with a smirk. “Are you a pirate or aren’t you, Jack?”

Jack stands in a huff, tossing his glass down on the table. Max stops it as it slides over to her, and without moving her head, her gaze shifts to Anne. They share a bemused smirk before Anne gets up to follow Jack, who is already halfway to the door.

Now, the krogan and the salarian commandeer a ship. They’re pirates. You know how the story goes. You don’t know how they acquire the crew, but does that matter? They did, or they didn’t. It makes no difference.

Their ship – let’s call it the Kingston – successfully intercepts the Khar’lak. Blood Pack isn’t in the habit of surrendering, but Anne cracks her knuckles, growls, “’bout time for my workout,” and next thing you know, the Khar’lak is en route to Neidus.

A krogan, an asari, and a salarian walk into a bar, except they don’t, but we’ve been over that. Three drinks, corner table. The salarian hands the asari a datapad, the Khar’lak’s manifest. She scans it and looks up at the salarian, an exuberant gleam sparkling in her eyes.

“You are sure of this?” she asks.

Jack nods. “Max,” he says, slowly, deliberately. “There’s nowhere in the galaxy you can sell 500,000 units of eezo. Even if you parcelled it out between buyers, it’s-“

“We aren’t going to sell it,” she says, casually slipping the datapad into her bag.

He blinks, looking back and forth between Anne and Max. “I’m sorry, run that by me again?”

She leans forward, her forearms flat on the table. “The real value of this hoard is not in credits, Jack. It is leverage.”

“To what end?”

She takes a sip of her drink with a nonchalant shrug. “You’re a smart man, Jack. What do you think?”

He leans back, his arms crossed tightly across his torso as he frowns. The gears grinding in his head are almost audible. Anne lifts her head, the brim of her headpiece rising high enough to reveal an eye to Max. They share a smirk, and watch Jack puzzle it through.

“Credits,” he begins, his face still contorted with thought, “are never an end in themselves. We’re after something that credits can achieve, but not purchase.”

A look of realisation eases the stress lines on his face. Somehow he looks more stressed. “You’re fucking crazy, Max.”

“It is the only thing the Attican Traverse lacks,” she says. “The Terminus is under Omega’s rule, and the Citadel has no interest in exerting their power here. We can keep being pushed and pulled between Omega and the Citadel, or we can create something here, ourselves.”

“You can’t take the Traverse with anything less than an armada,” Anne points out.

Max smiles.

“I’m beginning to dread when she smiles like that,” Jack says to Anne, lifting an eyebrow.

A krogan, an asari, and a salarian walk out of a bar, and that’s when the story really gets going.


	2. the magic's in the knowing

“There is freedom in the dark,” as a tall turian with the tell-tale stains of stripped-off clan markings scarring his face is fond of saying. It is so for many reasons in the Attican Traverse, just out of control of just about every power that tries to grasp it; the Traverse attracts outcasts and freedom-seekers of all sorts, and this makes it simultaneously dangerous and safe. Safe to be yourself, safe to do as you please, but dangerous to be surrounded by the galaxy’s irregulars unfettered by authority.

It seems both a star system and a lifetime ago that this turian, one James Flint, held another name and another purpose. A lieutenant in the turian fleet, a star rising in the ranks, James McGraw had become involved in the noble mission of Thomas Hamilton, a man with high standing in the Hierarchy. Though born to an important statesman in the Hierarchy, Thomas lived on the fringes of acceptable society, having married a human woman, Miranda, while the fires of the First Contact War were still being extinguished. His extraordinary plan to have the pirates of the Traverse pardoned was in line with everything else about him: unconventional, unabashed, and unconquerable.

Unconquerable, that was, until Thomas’s father discovered that James, Thomas, and Miranda were engaged in more than business arrangements. Thomas was forcibly disappeared, leaving James and Miranda adrift in a world that held only hostility for them.

James McGraw disappeared into the dark with Miranda, and James Flint emerged on the other side.

Flint is the name you recognise. That’s the one that comes with all the stories. The bloodthirsty, merciless pirate captain whose ship sails on shattered stardust, a ship populated with a crew of demons. A rebel without a cause, and thus an enemy with no weakness. They’re good stories, told in hushed tones punctuated with the crackle of a roaring fire in an out-of-the-way bar. It’s what people want to hear: adventure, treachery, evil.

And none of it’s true, of course. The real story is better.

It is the way of things in the Traverse, that the only way to the light is through the dark. James Flint fights to right the wrongs done to James McGraw, to ensure that no one else is punished for dreaming of love and a better world. It is at once selfish and selfless, altruistic and narcissistic. Elsewhere in the galaxy one might call it a paradox; here, though, it simply is.

There is little business in the Traverse that does not involve Flint in one way or another. People reacting to him, people working for him, people working against him. The unsavoury truth of the matter is, as Max explains to Jack in the shuttle as they approach the docking bay of an old rachni station orbiting Damkianna, that no significant change in the Traverse is possible that does not involve Flint, and it is wisest to have him working for you, rather than against.

“I still think Flint is unnecessary,” Jack pouts. “Can we not secure Charles’s assistance-“

“Charles is practically a certainty,” Max handwaves flippantly. “Flint will need to be persuaded to our cause _before_ involving Charles if we don’t want another war between them on our hands.”

“What if Charles refuses to work with Flint?” Anne asks, turning from her moody gaze out the window.

“Charles will not turn you two down,” says Max. “Flint would turn down Charles, but not if we are not offering him Charles to begin with.”

Jack purses his lips and sighs in reluctant assent.

The shuttle docks, and they board the station. The air is stale, dead from disuse. Dim blue lighting is the only illumination of the wide halls Max, Jack, and Anne stride down, looking for another sign of life. They reach a door with a glowing red lock dimly wavering. Max pulls up her omnitool to bypass it, and the lock turns green with a small shower of sparks. They open the door to see Flint seated at the head of the long table, Miranda standing behind and to his left. Flint wears a scowl, but Miranda’s expression is more interesting: a cautious smile, clearly hiding something, and the act of concealment seems to bring an amused twinkle to her eye.

“Please,” she gestures to the three seats at the end of the table nearest where the trio entered.

Max sits at the foot of the table, Jack and Anne on either side. Miranda takes a seat at Flint’s side, folding her hands on the table and looking at Max expectantly.

“We have a business proposition for you,” Max says evenly.

Flint nods silently.

Max takes a deep breath and continues. “We have recently acquired the means to finance a significant fleet-“

“Fascinating,” Flint says dully.

“We’re asking for your assistance,” Jack says, bitterness tinging his voice.

“What do you need my assistance for? Sounds like you’re doing alright.”

“Captain,” Max says, “We intend to unite the Traverse under one governance. One on our own terms, not the Citadel’s, not Omega’s.”

“And you want us to join you?” Miranda asks, a mix of intrigue and incredulity in her tone.

Max – and, for that matter, everyone else in the galaxy – doesn’t know James McGraw. She doesn’t understand the conversation Miranda and the shape of Flint have in a series of exchanged glances. She doesn’t realise she is offering him one thing and he is receiving another.

“What are you asking?” Flint asks, not shifting his gaze from its lock with Miranda’s.

“We will need as many allies as we can find,” Max says curiously, watching the wordless exchange. “We will need to establish hard borders, push opposing forces out of the Traverse.”

“And you,” Flint gestures to the three of them, “You’d be in charge?”

“Yes and no.” Max tilts her head to the side thoughtfully. “I know pirates too well to think any sort of sovereign force will be effective. We will govern ourselves, all of us. But in order to secure our freedom, we must band together.”

“Just long enough to kick out the opposition,” Jack says with a smirk.

Flint grunts. “Who else is with you?”

“No one yet,” replies Max.

Flint grunts again. Jack looks nervously at Max, who is the picture of serene calm, her eyes seemingly casually alighting on Flint and Miranda.

“And your financial means?” Flint asks, again his eyes remaining on Miranda’s.

“An eezo hoard.”

“How much?”

Max pauses. “I would be willing to negotiate your share-“

“How much?” Flint repeats, his focused glare now shifting to Max.

“500,000 units.”

Flint’s face remains still as a stone as he turns back to Miranda. They stare at each other for what feels like hours. She nods.

“Assuming your war will drain those stores considerably,” he says carefully, looking at his hands on the table as he considers, “Of whatever’s left at the end – 40%.”

“30,” counters Max.

“35.”

Max nods. “And keep 50% of whatever prizes you win until then.”

Flint looks at her with a sharp grin as he stands up, both hands flat on the table as he pushes himself up out of his chair. “I’ll keep all of my prizes, Madame 500,000 Units of Eezo.”

Max tilts her head again with an amused grin this time. “Fair enough.”

“You can contact me through the usual place,” Flint says over his shoulder as he and Miranda leave the station.

It is a beginning, in one sense, and the beginning of an end in another. Chapter 2 of one person’s story is chapter 13 of another. Somewhere, ink drops on the first page of the epilogue of someone else’s tale. Five people in a meeting room create ten stories, at least. The art of choosing which story you tell is something James Flint has known for a long time. What he doesn’t yet know is that, even with as many stories as he holds, he doesn’t know them all.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Tumblr at verhexen!


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